About this Book

Book Summary

In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever

Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them.

In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his mother's own violent Southern childhood. In "In the Blink of God's Eye" and "Tapestry" newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed.

With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw away and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

In the Blink of God's Eye

That 1901 winter when the wife and her husband were still new to Washington,
there came to the wife like a scent carried on the wind some word that wolves
roamed the streets and roads of the city after sundown. The wife, Ruth
Patterson, knew what wolves could do: she had an uncle who went to Alaska in
1895 to hunt for gold, an uncle who was devoured by wolves not long after he
slept under his first Alaskan moon. Still, the night, even in godforsaken
Washington, sometimes had that old song that could pull Ruth up and out of her
bed, the way it did when she was a girl across the Potomac River in Virginia
where all was safe and all was family. Her husband, Aubrey, always slept the
sleep of a man not long out of boyhood and never woke. Hearing the song call her
from her new bed in Washington, Ruth, ever mindful of the wolves, would take up
their knife and pistol and kiss Aubrey's still-hairless face and descend to the
porch. She was well ...

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Like Jones's mother, his characters mainly originate from the rural South and are coping with the urbanization of their lives with varying degrees of success. However, even though most have left to find a better life, many of the older people tend to long for the life they knew when they were young - a time somewhere in the short period following the northern migration of the children and grand-children of the former slaves, when it was still possible to feel part of a small community in the big city.
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Media Reviews

The Washington Post

With the publication of All Aunt Hagar's Children, his third book and second collection of short stories, Jones has established himself as one of the most important writers of his own generation ...and of the present day.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A complex, sometimes somber collection....Jones broadens his chronological scope to encompass virtually the entire 20th century and a wide range of experiences and African-American perspectives.

Kirkus Reviews

Jones's engrossing, exquisitely crafted and unforgettable stories offer images of the African-American experience that are unparalleled in American fiction.

Boolist - Vanessa Bush

Jones' stories are rich in detail and emotions as he plumbs the intricacies of people's relationships with one another and with spiritual forces at work in urban as well as natural environments. Readers who enjoyed The Known World will relish these varied gems of Jones' talent for storytelling.

Readalikes

Readalikes

Set in the period following World War II, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of twenty-four hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society characterized by slavery.

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